Home/ Questions/Q 5945825
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-22T16:44:09+00:00

I’m trying to come up with the most simple / userful / efficient method

  • 0

I’m trying to come up with the most simple / userful / efficient method to group 3 users together using mysql.

To set the stage:

  • X number of users in a list (all with int account_id’s)
  • mini groupings need to be created on a per user basis (user 1 wants to group with 220 for instance).
  • Max 3 people per grouping (user 1 + user 220 + user 9123 = group full)
  • Need to easily find if a user is in a group or not without looking in a bunch of columns

I’m stumped about how best to create a schema for this (so I can easily query my table to see if user is in a group, or if they can be added, or check for group space availability).

Anyone have any idea? My initial thought is schema like this (but it really seems too rigid):

Schema

GROUP_ID  USER1  USER2  USER3 LASTUPDATE
1         1      220    null  5/25/2011 20:00:00
2         300    2      4     5/25/2011 20:00:00

How would you do it to make something this simple very flexible and efficient. I really feel stupid for asking.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Personally I would approach this by using 3 tables.

    Users Table
user_id user_name ..... last_update

Groups Table
group_id group_name ......

Users to groups Table
user_to_group_id user_id group_id

    This forms a many to many relationship by linking through the “Users to groups” table, obviously you can have more that 3 users linked to one group so you will have to make your PHP logic check for this when adding a new user to a group.

    You can simply use SQL joins to retrieve all the data required and filter the results in your PHP code.

    I hope this helps

    Kind regards

    Garry

    • 0